Chapter 54 – Mimicry

Content warning, not the usual kind either. Read ahead at your own discretion.

It wasn’t just my imagination. The treasure chest was currently shuddering, like a jack-in-the-box vibrating right before it was about to burst.

“Get back–”

Before I could finish, the lid of the unassuming wooden treasure chest burst open with a violent bang, revealing a gruesome set of teeth and a long slimy tongue.

From the sides of the chest, two arms sprouted out with the grace of an insect forcefully emerging from its cocoon, and legs and a slimy torso erupted from the bottom of the treasure chest, as the toothed chest lunged towards me and bit into my thigh, its drool running down my leg as it latched its teeth into my flesh.

[-470 health]

“Aggghh!” I screamed in pain.

Health: 394/864

[You are severely wounded. Seek medical attention immediately.]

The treasure chest mimic gnashed its teeth into my left thigh, causing even more laceration damage.

Health: 342/864

I punched at the chest, but my fist just hit solid wood or whatever the hell its head was made of. Gripping the shaft of my adamantite poleaxe near the top for stability, I brought the blade of the poleaxe down onto the chest. On impact, the blade of the poleaxe buried itself into the mimic’s treasure chest head, although it didn’t seem to phase the creature very much.

[21 damage]

[Angel of Luxuria used Luxurious Heal on you.]

+2 health

+2 health

[Angel of Luxuria casted buff on you.]

+100 physical defense

+100 magic resistance

+100 vitality

The healing was nowhere near fast enough to save me from this monster. I needed to shake it off of me, now.

“Shadow!”

My body bursting into an incorporeal mist-like form, I commanded my black cloud form to fly away as the mimic fell to the ground with a loud clank, before it pushed itself up and stood to full height. And my god was this monster one lanky son of a bitch, standing at over two meters tall, most of its height in its disgusting torso and long slender legs, naked and skinless like a hairless sphynx cat except without even skin to cover its slimy pink flesh.

“Eek!” Rosalia screamed as the mimic lurched towards her. She raised her staff to defend herself while closing her eyes for a moment out of instinctual fear.

Bjorn stepped forward with the confidence and poise of a mother bear defending its cubs, swinging the adamantite battleaxe I gifted him with old man strength, or old dwarf strength to be more accurate. Old man strength was the phenomenon where a grizzled fifty year old man could routinely outmuscle a younger twenty year old boy in their physical prime, because of a surprising amount of hidden strength molded through years and years of pent up stress from hard labor, both physical and mental.

The way Bjorn faced off against the monstrosity of a treasure chest mimic without a single hint of fear from his posture showed that the dwarf went through so much in his life thus far, he had no fear left in his system. In fact, he didn’t even have much anger left in his system either. What he was showing now was an almost unnerving amount of calm combined with deliberate aggression, forcefully delivered to deal the maximum amount of damage with every battle axe swing.

One swing connected with the mimic’s torso, gashing the creature and causing a bit of green goo-like blood to run down its body.

[Bjorn dealt 70 damage to Mimic]

The mimic squatted to the ground with its abnormally long appendages, then leapt forward like a frog, its long arms with claws outstretched and its treasure chest jaw gaping open, saliva flying out of its mouth as its tongue trailed across the corner of its treasure chest mouth.

With a deadly combination swing, Bjorn connected the battle axe once again, this time right across the face of the mimic, smacking the treasure chest loudly and leaving a gash in its faux wood. A reddish green goo spilled from the open wound, as the mimic recoiled in pain and let out an ear splitting shriek.

[Bjorn dealt 147 damage to Mimic.]

+2 health

+2 health

Health: 470/864

Rosalia’s [Luxurious Heal] was continuing to tick and heal me, although not quite as fast as I would’ve liked. However, the mimic was staggered so i needed to risk it to get some damage in.

Actually, whether to engage or not at this moment was a hard decision to make. The mimic wouldn’t be staggered forever, but at this health threshold I was susceptible to being instakilled.

Fuck. I should’ve used dimension ripper earlier when I was in melee range of the treasure chest mimic. There was no time for regrets though. Making a few suboptimal errors was expected in the course of a high adrenaline combat situation where decisions needed to be made with a split second to spare. In fact, that’s what made combat so malleable in this game. Even with all the tools at your disposal, your combat potential was limited to the fringes of your imagination and decision making.

In fact, this was similar to skill expression at the highest levels of competitive gaming and even sports, to a certain extent. In tennis, an unforced error was a misplay that was not caused by any particular play from your opponent, and could only be attributed to yourself. Even at the pinnacle of professional tennis, top ten players would still make unforced errors at a relatively high rate. It was simply a cost of doing business, so to speak, and reducing that rate made you a better player.

In competitive gaming, there were a lot more tools available to each player when compared to sports, where the limitations of your body, the relatively basic rules of the sport, and physics and gravity themselves limited creativity to a certain extent. In games, a player’s creativity could be unleashed to its full potential. That was why, at the top level of professional gaming in genres such as RTSes, you could clearly see that players would develop their own styles and individual expressions despite being given exactly the same tools as one another.

To reach the pinnacle of PvP and PvE in this game, I needed to figure out my own individual expression, and cultivate my own creative combat potential. And I didn’t need to worry too much about making unforced errors. Even the best of the best made mistakes. The only thing important was the summation of the entire combat. The big picture. The higher expected value across the entire combat.

The Σ sigma factor.

In fact, that was one of my greatest strengths when compared to other players, who would get too caught up in the details of a particular interaction to realize that it was the summation that mattered. There were a lot of people that thought like that in this world, caught up so much in the details that their performance suffered tremendously while they simultaneously continued to be wilfully stubborn and unable to admit that their thought processes were incorrect from a holistic standpoint. I would take pleasure in taking those kinds of people down one by one in the future.

+2 health

+2 health

Health: 772/864

I was thinking of all of this while delaying for just a bit longer so some last few healing ticks could apply. Another version of myself might have rushed in, looking for the coin flip, but that was not me today. I decided that the risk of getting one shot was not worth a possible dimension ripper execution on the mimic while it was staggered. In a three-on-one situation, the better play here was probably to be safe, until I had enough health to survive two hits. Speaking of which, I had enough health now.

“Dimension ripper!”

Activating my left hand, I limped towards the mimic with my injured left leg. Wait. Was this really the right idea?

“Love whip, restrain!”

I had to remember to use all the tools in my arsenal.

The whip shot across from my hand towards the mimic, wrapping around the creature in a strange fashion. I suddenly noticed that at the groin region of the treasure chest mimic’s slender, skinless body, there was a massive erect penis, curved upwards almost like a phallic shaped scimitar blade. For a moment even my mind went blank. I knew that the game required players to be over the age of eighteen to play, but something this disturbing was still very jarring to see.

Sometimes I forgot that my love whip was a succubus demonic summon.

[Love whip has failed to restrain target. Target’s level is too high.]

And just like that, the mimic broke free of the whip, swaying on its two feet as it tried to regain its balance. The mimic’s cock swung around back and forth like a meaty light saber, as it struggled to stay balanced.

I was tempted to use thunderbolt, but refrained from doing so. The spell had outlived its usefulness at this point. In close range, dimension ripper was simply superior, and in long range, the recoil was getting so out of hand that I had to use it with utmost care.

Stumbling forward, the mimic approached while drooling from both its mouth above and its cock below. I took a glance upwards at its health bar and name, and shuddered. The mimic’s name was highlighted in the same dark shade of red that bordered upon black that we saw earlier with the deinonychuses, and its health bar was barely touched even after all that damage.

Even worse, it seemed to be regenerating health at a slow but consistent pace. All creatures had passive health regeneration, but I never fought a creature so high level up until now that their passive health regeneration actually became an issue.

To my left, Rosalia had been preparing to cast her smiting light beam, but canceled the magic circle as the mimic drew closer. Cancelling spell casts was not ideal, because some of the mana, and in Rosalia’s case, divine energy, was spent even if the spell did not complete.

Even Bjorn was backing off away from the mimic, realizing that his direct hits weren’t enough to take this creature down fast enough, and that just one bite was all it took to cause a severe injury.

Retreat.

The word sounded in my head as if someone else spoke it. However, I knew it was just my subconscious telling me to get the hell out of here. We weren’t ready for this encounter. Hell, I didn’t know if we would ever be ready for this encounter.

“Retreat,” I said with a firm voice, verbalizing my thoughts to the rest of our party.

The mimic continued to stumble forward, its unnervingly slim body lurching forward like a drunk bipedal flesh spider, and its massive erect cock bobbing up and down with drool slobbering down the tip. It was heading towards Rosalia.

I telekinetically lashed love whip at the mimic.

[21 damage]

It just wasn’t doing enough. Bjorn was squeezing his way through the collapsed mural’s crack in the wall. Seeing us in trouble, he tried to come back out, but I stopped him.

“Keep going!” I shouted at the dwarf.

With that, Bjorn resumed his attempt at fitting his stout body through the tight crack in the wall.

If only I could knock over the bookshelf to obstruct the mimic’s path and buy some more time for us to escape. I was a bit too far to do it, and love whip could not be targeted against non-living beings, due to its special properties as a succubus summoned weapon.

Rosalia stumbled backwards, but instead of fully tripping, her [Angelic Hover] kicked in right before her back and head hit the floor. Her body levitated in a slanted position about a foot above the ground.

The treasure chest head mimic continued to stumble forward, getting uncomfortably close to Rosalia with its drooling cock and drooling spiky toothed chest and elongated tongue. Its cock twitched in anticipation as it stood right above the cleric. Drool dripping down from the mimic's treasure chest mouth fell and landed on Rosalia's robes, as the mimic squatted down and examined the trembling angelic cleric.

If only I could knock over that bookshelf…

Suddenly, a flash of inspiration went through my head. Love whip couldn’t target inanimate objects. It could only target living beings, and try to lash at them. But that didn’t guarantee that the whip would connect. After all, many times in the past, the whip failed to connect with its intended target because of my piss poor telekinetic control.

It could miss.

But what if I wanted it to miss?

What if I wanted it to miss the intended target, and accidentally hit something else?

Just like that, a world of possibility opened up in my conniving head.